In the last few days, paperwork and unfinished materials pulled from the rubble indicate that the list of companies that bought clothing from the factories included: Benetton of Italy, Children’s Place and Cato Corporation from the U.S., Kik from Germany, Loblaw from Canada, Mango and El Corte Inglés from Spain as well as Bon Marche and Primark of the U.K.

Activists are furious. “(T)hese retailers cannot just wash their hand and say, "We didn't do production there," Kalpona Akter, executive director of the Bangladesh Center for Worker Solidarity, told Democracy Now, a U.S. TV program. “They have responsibility. They cannot just go away from this responsibility and say that "We didn't sew, or we didn't produce, make clothes in this factory."

European Union (EU) governments have promised to take action by targeting the Bangladeshi government. “The EU is presently considering appropriate action, including through the Generalised System of Preferences – through which Bangladesh currently receives duty-free and quota-free access to the EU market under the ‘Everything But Arms’ scheme – in order to incentivise responsible management of supply chains involving developing countries,” said Catherine Ashton, the EU foreign policy chief, and Karel De Gucht, the EU trade commissioner, said.

But experts are skeptical noting that the 27 countries that make up the EU will probably back down under pressure from the multinational retailers who source $20 billion of clothing a year from the south Asian country. Nor is the Bangladeshi government likely to pay much heed, given that many senior politicians own garment factories.